Fime, a France-based payments testing and certification company, has announced the launch of FACT, the Framework for Agentic Commerce Trust, a trust layer designed to enable financial institutions, merchants, and payment ecosystem participants to securely manage transactions initiated by AI agents.
The framework provides neutral, real-time trust verification between AI systems and payment rails, covering intent validation, real-time policy and compliance monitoring, independent auditor agents for neutral trust verification, and transaction-level trust attestation for decisioning and auditability. FACT is positioned as an independent layer distinct from frameworks embedded within specific payment networks or technology platforms, enabling it to operate across different systems without conflicts of interest.
Design rationale and ecosystem benefits
Existing payment and trust infrastructure was built for human-initiated transactions and was not designed to govern AI agent decisions, creating gaps in compliance, fraud prevention, and accountability as autonomous agents begin executing transactions on behalf of users and enterprises. FACT is intended to address those gaps by providing continuously verifiable trust signals that can be consumed across the payments value chain.
For merchants, FACT enables confident acceptance of AI-initiated transactions through machine-readable trust signals. For banks and payment networks, it provides additional inputs for authorisation, fraud prevention, and risk management. For regulators, it offers increased transparency and real-time oversight. For consumers, it supports retained control when delegating purchasing decisions to AI agents.
By establishing a shared trust framework, Fime aims to prevent the emergence of fragmented, platform-controlled trust models and support interoperability across the agentic commerce ecosystem. The company said it is actively engaging with the ecosystem and expects to share pilot updates in the coming period.
Commenting on the news, Lionel Grosclaude, CEO at Fime, noted that agentic commerce is already emerging across payment and digital ecosystems, and that FACT introduces the missing neutral, continuously verifiable trust infrastructure required for autonomous commerce to grow safely and globally.
